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Updated: May 2, 2025
Always out of sympathy with such displays, but now more than ever repelled by them, Grace and Gregory hurried away to find themselves penned in a court, surrounded on all sides by strident cries of "barkers", cracking reports from target-practice, fusillades at the "doll-babies", clanging jars from strength-testers and the like; while from this horrid field of misguided energy, there was no outlet save the narrow entrance they had unwittingly used.
With the return of the troops who are now acquiring military knowledge in the best of all possible schools, we shall possess the necessary material for executing whatever system may be decided upon as best for the military education of the people; but meantime we may lay the foundation for it, and take the most efficient means of securing legislative action, by the immediate organization of rifle-clubs for target-practice throughout the State.
The other States have been compelled to get along without vessels, for the reason that there have been no others available. During the summer of 1894 the Massachusetts brigade of the militia encamped for drill on Lovell's Island, Boston Harbor, and the monitor "Passaic" was lent to the State. There were also drills and target-practice on the "Miantonomoh" and the "Atlanta."
Then another and another messenger would be sent to the enemy, which seldom struck the mark, for gunnery on a rough sea is a difficult art. But the blockade-runner can't stand being used for target-practice long. The cool head of her captain begins to deliberate upon means of getting out of range.
Only, in the valley of Westring there was drill and target-practice and barrack-life routine, the Westring-eccentricity being associated with the millionaire, Hogarth, the island-eccentricity with the House of Beech: and in the popular mind Beech and Hogarth were two notions.
When one was hit, another stepped quietly up to his place and went on shooting as if at target-practice, though he had no more cover than a small stone to lie behind; and this happened not once but a score of times, the officers taking an equal share in the fight with their men, who speak with pride of the gallantry shown by Captains de Rothe and Codrington, Lieutenants Webb, Pakeman, Adams, Campbell, and Richardson, and the active veteran Major Doveton, who cheered his men on after he had received two bullet wounds, one of which shattered his fore-arm and shoulder.
They put him down at last; and in half a dozen sentences Wilbur told them of how he had been shanghaied told them of Magdalena Bay, his fortune in the ambergris, and the fight with the beach-combers. "You people are going down there for target-practice, aren't you?" he said, turning to one of the "Monterey's" officers in the crowd about him. "Yes?
Wilbur maintained a lookout from the crow's-nest in the hope of sighting some white cruiser or battleship on her way south for target-practice. In the cache of provisions he had left for the beach-combers he had inserted a message, written by Hoang, to the effect that they might expect to be taken off by a United States man-of-war within the month.
Under the early statutes no archer was permitted to practise at any standing mark at less than "eleven score yards distant;" no archer under twenty-four years of age was allowed to shoot twice from the same stand-point; parents and masters were subject to a fine of 6 shillings and 8 pence if they allowed their youth, under the age of seventeen, "to be without a bow and two arrows for one month together;" the walled towns were required to set up their butts, to keep them in repair, and to turn out for target-practice on holidays, and at other convenient times.
Great numbers of able-bodied men may be found in every community, who will be very ready to join associations to meet at stated intervals for simple target-practice, but who could not afford the time which would necessarily be required for the attainment of anything like efficient discipline as soldiers.
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